Cafe Noir

I was tagged by the terrific and talented Michael W. Sherer to participate in the Meet My Character blog tour/hop.  Michael recently posted his, and you should check it out: http://www.michaelwsherer.com/blog.htm?post=967483

Mike is the Thriller Award-nominated, best-selling author of Night Blind, the first in the Seattle-based Blake Sanders thriller series, which was also named a best book of 2012 by The Examiner’s “Miami Books.” Mike has published six novels in the award-winning Emerson Ward mystery series and a stand-alone suspense novel, Island Life, which was a USA Book News “Best Books” award-winner in 2008.

http://www.emersonwardmysteries.com
http://www.islandlife-thenovel.com
http://www.michaelwsherer.com
michael.w.sherer@facebook.com

So here’s my answers to the Character Blog Hop questions:

1) What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Zach Tanner is a fictional character in my stand-alone novella Vortex. Zach is, or was, a cocky guy who joined the National Guard with three of his high school buddies. But after his tour in Afghanistan some of that cockiness has been knocked out of him, big time.


2) When and where is the story set?

The story is set in Los Angeles in the present, or at least the not-too-distant past. It begins with a flash open of a chase on Pacific Coast Highway. Zach and his high school sweetheart, Jess, are being chased by a hot red Camaro. Jess wants Zach to talk to their pursuers: He responds: “We can't go back. Don't you understand, they'll kill us.” “They're your friends,” she says. "Yeah," Zach says, then thinks to himself: ‘The first rule of war is know your enemy. And I knew mine, too well—or maybe not well enough.’ —And that’s the problem, the people chasing him are his friends—or were.


3) What should we know about him/her?

Zach and his three buddies enlisted together. Served together. Did some bad shit together and thought their bond would never break. But war changed Zach more than he could ever imagine. And maybe it changed his buds too, but in the opposite way. Now the former best friends are enemies. And the collateral damage could be Jess or Zach’s brother or his new love.


4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Don’t want to give too much away. But: Zach and his buds set something in motion while in Afghanistan that has major repercussions on their return home. Zach has a change of heart...but his buddies don’t.


5) What is the personal goal of the character?

His immediate goal is to protect his girlfriend, Jess, and get them away from his former pals, who think they might know something. His long term goal is to put it all behind them and live a normal life, after this chain of events that might end up taking several lives.


6) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

Vortex. And, unfortunately nothing more yet, but stay tuned for further updates.


7) When can we expect the book to be published?

Not sure. Hopefully not too distant future.


I’ve tagged three terrific authors to carry on the bunny, I mean blog hop:

Max Everhart is the author of Go Go Gato, a terrific debut mystery. He writes and reviews mysteries, crime thrillers and detective fiction, when playing hooky from teaching English and Creative Writing. http://www.maxeverhart.com/

Jan Grape is an Anthony award-winning writer with a successful mystery series and more than two dozen short stories to her credit. Her novels include, Austin City Blue and Dark Blue Death, both featuring Austin Police detective, Zoe Barrow.
http://www.sleuthsayers.org/

G.B. Pool (Gayle Bartos-Pool) is a former private detective and once a newspaper reporter for a small town weekly. She writes short stories as well as two detective series, one featuring Johnny Casino, an ex-mobster, and also Gin Caulfield, an over fifty gal who’s still packing heat. G.B. teaches writing classes: “The Anatomy of a Short Story,” ”How To Write Convincing Dialogue,” and “How To Write a Killer Opening Line.” Website: www.gbpool.com .

Today I have a guest blogger, Gayle Bartos-Pool. Her new novel The Johnny Casino Casebook 1: Past Imperfect has just been released. A hot and hard mystery about a P.I. with a past.

A former private detective and once a reporter for a small weekly newspaper, Gayle Bartos-Pool has other published books, including Media Justice, and several short stories in anthologies, LAndmarked for Murder and Little Sisters Volume 1. The former Speakers Bureau Director for Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles, she is also a member of Mystery Writers of America. Her short story appears in the anthology, Dying in a Winter Wonderland, which was voted one of the Top Ten of Softcover Books as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) of 2008.

Welcome Gayle:

Thanks so much for inviting me to join you on your blog, Paul.

I look forward to your Facebook notices of Noir movies coming on the movie channel. I’m addicted to them, too. Maybe that’s why the main character in my Johnny Casino series is a fan of the genre.

Johnny grew up in a Mob family in New Jersey, so to escape his life he watched old movies on a 13 inch black and white television. Even after he started working for his father, the consigliere for the D’Abruzzo crime family, he still watched those old Noir classics. He took his look from Tyrone Power in the movie Johnny Apollo. That actually isn’t all that odd. Real life gangster “Crazy Joe” Gallo was said to have dressed like George Raft in dark suits, black shirts and white ties because he thought the movie gangster looked cool. And they say movies don’t influence people.

I got that tidbit from the book, Five Families, a terrific read about “the rise and decline and resurgence of America’s most powerful Mafia Empires” by Selwyn Raab. It was a great primer in all things Mafioso. What I didn’t get from that book, I got from a guy whose father was in the Greek Mafia. This guy was a cop. I could see the conflict the former cop had because of his family ties. That was what I tried to put into Johnny Casino’s character.

As I delved into Johnny’s past, I wrote what turned out to be the second story in the first Johnny Casino Casebook. It’s called “The Family Business.” I learned a lot about Johnny from writing that story. It showed me where Johnny came from and why he wanted to get away from that early life.

Another problem came up while writing the first book. My agent wanted Johnny to have a girlfriend. That was another reason I wrote that second story. Johnny likes women, he just can’t trust them. This attitude is very much like the characters in those old Noir movies we love. I prefer either the femme fatal or the lady in distress in most of my stories with Johnny, but he did begin his private detective days working for a woman. And he admires this lady, she just loves somebody else. He did have an affair with a Mafia boss’s wife. Obviously, Johnny likes to live dangerously.

At the beginning of this first book, Johnny Casino states that he is a retired private detective with a past, he just hopes it doesn’t catch up with him. This opens the door for ghosts from his former lives to pop up, both his Mafia past and the time he was a P.I. the first time. I can do stories in flashback when I want to explain how Johnny got to be who he is and I can also have some of those earlier characters appear in the present after Johnny gets back in the detective business.

I basically write The Johnny Casino Casebook stories like a TV series. If you remember the old Magnum, P.I. TV show, they did flashbacks and brought in characters from his past every so often to give the viewer a full spectrum of his life. I do that with Johnny.

The first book in the series is subtitled Past Imperfect. Every story concerns someone with a skeleton or two in his or her closet. One story features a famous Hollywood star and a retired Broadway actress. This particular actress has a deadly secret in her closet and she is being blackmailed. The Hollywood actor wants Johnny to help out, but the actor has a few skeletons in his closet, too.

There is a story about politician with a playmate who has disappeared, and another case where Johnny is asked to return a dead body to the man responsible for the deed. Johnny even helps out the local sheriff whose wife has disappeared. This story takes him across the boarder into Mexico with a redhead you won’t soon forget.

Johnny explains how he met the woman who trained him as a detective in another story. You will see why he likes her so much. And the last story takes Johnny to Miami when his “wife” asks for money to keep her mouth shut. Only thing, Johnny doesn’t have a wife. This tale leaves Johnny with a question: Who the hell am I?

Books two and three are already written, so I know a lot about Johnny Casino. I drop in movie references frequently and Johnny works for various movie stars from time to time. I do change their names, but you might guess who they are. I like these actors too much to associate dead bodies and shenanigans with a real person. It was fun taking their actual time frame and creating a different character around it. I use places where they really lived in some cases and even some of the movies they made, I just changed the titles slightly to keep this fiction. A few come back for guest appearances in other stories later in the series.

Thanks for inviting me to your blog. I hope you enjoy The Johnny Casino Casebook – Past Imperfect. You can find the book on Amazon or link to it through my website: www.gbpool.com.

Thank you, Gayle.   Good luck with the first Johnny Casino and I look forward to the next one!

As writers should we be concerned about the dumbing down of society? Do we even believe this is occurring?
Some time ago, I had been driving in the car with a friend of mine who was a development exec at one of the studios. Somehow we got onto a discussion of whether or not rendezvous is spelled with a Z ? Try as I might, I could not convince her that there was a Z in that word, until we finally got to my place and I could prove it to her with a dictionary. Of course, this was in ye olden days before iPads and smart phones.
Another time I was in a meeting with a story editor. The question came up, what's the difference between East and West Germany, this when there still was an East and West Germany. She had been reading a script and wasn't sure. So I had to tell her, yet with or without my little history lesson she was going to pass judgment on another writer's screenplay.
A similar thing occurred when another production executive asked me whose side we had been on, the North or South Vietnamese. Another wanted to know who fought on which sides in World War II – things anyone with a high school education should know. All these people had degrees from good colleges. And I could mention so many more similar incidents.
When I was working for a nationally syndicated entertainment radio show the producer/host called another writer and myself into the office and dressed us down for using too many "big" and multisyllabic words. We were trying to raise people up instead of lowering them down and instead we were dressed down. Actually, we weren't even trying to do that. We were just writing the way we thought and we didn't think we were using such big words that people wouldn't know them.
Eventually, I ended up going to pitch meetings or other meetings and dumbing down everything I had to say. After all, I didn't want to insult the hand that was feeding me.
In a different arena, my wife and I have been in our current house eight years now. But one of the significant things I remember when we were looking at houses was how many had few to no books in them. And eight years ago the whole country wasn't wired as it is today. There weren't e-books and iPads on which to store your thousand book library out of sight. And before that, in the mid-90s, when we were looking for our previous house, it was the same. No books in sight.   
I thought this odd at the time. Now I think it's scary. True, people have the internet today for instant reference. But there's something to be said for having a store of basic and shared knowledge in your head that you can recall in an instant, instead of having to look it up here or there. Granted, we cannot know everything about everything, but there should be a rudimentary cultural base that the vast majority of society is tuned into. And why not use bigger words sometimes? I remember sitting and reading books with a dictionary at my side, writing lists of words and looking them up. That's how you learn, how you expand your vocabulary – your knowledge base. So why dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator? Is that really the society we want to live in?
As writers, I would think we'd want a literate customer base of people who will more often than not get our literary and other allusions, our historical references, etc. I think we should challenge people, both our readers and our editors, producers, etc., to uplift rather than pander to the lowest common denominator. And not succumb to the dictates of those who want everything dumbed down.
And yes, Virginia, there is, indeed, a Z in rendezvous –- look it up.

Andrew McAleer is the publisher of the venerable Crimestalker Casebook mystery magazine. He's also authored three well-received mystery novels, including "Bait and Switch" and "Appearance of Counsel," as well the non-fiction "Mystery Writing in a Nutshell," written with his father Edgar winner John McAleer, and the number one best seller "101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists: Insider Secrets from Top Writers".

Mr. McAleer, along with Harry Sapienza, has recently ushered a project of his father John McAleer's to fruition: PACKED AND LOADED: CONVERSATIONS WITH JAMES M. CAIN, who as many of you know is the author of "Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Mildred Pierce," to name just a few.

Not only does Cain discuss his first notions to be a writer, his newspaper days and his Hollywood years. He also reveals his brutally honest thoughts on everyone from Hammett and Chandler to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller and even Marilyn Monroe. The book is peppered with epigraphs from Elmore Leonard, Sue Grafton, Robert B. Parker and Dennis Lehane among others.

Q: Welcome, Andy. Before we get to PACKED AND LOADED, maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? I understand that you're a prosecutor in Massachusetts. It seems that your profession has had a definite impact on your novels, can you expand on that a little?

A: Thanks, Paul. I’ve had I think a fairly interesting legal career so far. Right after law school I started a small law practice in the town I grew up in – Lexington. The only legal books I had were my grandfather’s old law books dating back to the 19 teens and 20s including the Mr. Tutt casebooks by Arthur Train, which I devoured and highly recommend. I did a lot of “country” law – real estate, probate, criminal defense. My first book Appearance of Counsel is about a small-town lawyer and my second and third novels Double Endorsement and Bait and Switch about a PI. I prefer the malice domestic formula used by Rex Stout and many of the Golden Age of mystery greats. My latest novel Fatal Deeds (Cherokee McGhee) will be released in August 2011 and is about a retired sheriff Gus Churchill. He hangs his shingle in Concord, Massachusetts. Working as a prosecutor has really helped round off my writing more from an investigative stand point. How things are done from a tactical questioning point of view and in terms of character development. In Fatal Deeds Gus likes to catch bad guys with brain over brawn and a little country charm. I may be old fashioned, but I like to know who the bad guys and good guys are. I would say my entrepreneurial background and legal background have served me well on what it’s really like to survive as a self-employed PI – keeping the wolf off the door can be as challenging as catching bad guys.

Q: You also taught at Boston College. I'm sure that's also had some effect on your writing.

A: I think everyone should teach. It keeps you young and in touch and you definitely learn more from your students than you could ever teach them.

Q: And the third corner of your tri-corner hat is that you're a Sergeant in the Army National Guard. Are you with the JAG? Has your army duty come into play in your writing? And do you plan to do a novel that might specifically revolve around that?

A: Actually I’m with the Military History Detachment now. Like my character Gus Churchill I love local history – I mean . . . I have to, right. . . ? I’ve lived in Lexington all my life just a mile from the Battle Green where the “Shot heard ’round the world” was fired. I enjoyed writing my non-fiction works Mystery Writing in a Nutshell and the 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists, so I hope someday to produce a non-fiction book worthy of the men and women who make it all possible for us to write our tales.

Q: I understand that shortly before his death in 1977, James M. Cain commissioned your father, Dr. McAleer, to write his biography? That's a pretty interesting story in itself. Can you tell us a little more about how that came about?

A: Sure. My father was writing Rex Stout’s biography at the time when he and Cain somehow made contact. They began a correspondence where my father would send him questionnaires and Cain would respond. Then, in the fall semester of either 75 or 76, my father’s graduate student Harry Sapienza went down to Cain’s home in Maryland and interviewed him for a couple of hours. Harry did a phenomenal job and really got Cain to open up about all facets of his life. Eventually it came out that Cain had already hired Roy Hoopes to write his bio, so my father put the brakes on things and took up his bio on Emerson. He felt Hoopes had first dibs on the project. I know my father admired Hoopes’ biography on Cain as do I.

Q: Cain responded to Dr. McAleer's questions with the intensity known to him. He gives his thoughts on everyone from Hammett and Chandler, in the mystery genre, to Hemingway and Fitzgerald in literary fiction. Even Arthur Miller. Do you have a favorite story or quote?

A: As a fan of local history one of my favorite chapters in Packed and Loaded is Cain’s vivid description of what a Hollywood “Triangle Girl” is. I mean . . . he talks about Marilyn Monroe and how she was a Triangle Girl and what it really meant to be one. There’s a great story there about this culture perhaps long forgotten by all. Now it’s codified nowhere I think, but in the memories of Cain through Packed and Loaded. These fascinating gals, doing what it takes to survive in the gritty Hollywood of the 40s and 50s, could be the “Mad Men” of their day.

Q: What was your father's impression of Cain?

A: Very high. In one of his letters to Cain he told him he was happy just to be on the same planet with him. My father admired people who were straightforward and by the book. Rex Stout and Cain were very much cut from the same cloth. He was the real McCoy.

Q: Is there anything in particular that you find funny or insightful or unusual that Cain comes up with?

A: I think in his afterword to the book by Shamus Award winner Jeremiah Healy, he summed it up best focusing on how after each question Cain would ask, “What else you got?” Like his works, Cain was the king of “less is more.” You knew where you stood with him.

Q: How did Cain feel about the film versions of his work?

A: Cain wasn’t full of “Cain.” He enjoyed his success because it gave him a platform to write. Above all the story was what mattered. “Why does this story need to be told?” That’s why he preferred the first person POV. It has more of a ring of truth to it. He did not let Hollywood go to his head.

Q: I understand, too, that these interviews were almost lost to us until you found them. Can you tell us a little about that?

A: Good question. Around 2000 a publisher was releasing a new edition of my father’s Rex Stout biography. P.G. Wodehose wrote the original foreword to the Stout bio and when we dug out my father’s Wodehose correspondence to do some research for an updated introduction to the Stout bio, the Cain work – long since thought to be lost – was found!

Q: Your father was a serious literary biographer of people such as Dreiser and Thoreau before tackling Rex Stout in the mystery field. How and why did he make the jump?

A: My father was an eclectic scholar. I think his military training in the Big Two taught him how to adapt and in the old days of education this is what you had to do. In the 40s and 50s Boston College was not the big school it is today. The Jesuits gave him an assignment and it was his job to learn the subject, master it, and disseminate the knowledge to his students. Interestingly, it was his Dreiser bio that landed him the Stout bio. When my father was visiting his cousin in Connecticut back in 1968 or 69, his cousin invited him to meet his neighbor – Rex Stout. When Stout met my father he had just completed my father’s book on Dreiser and admired it very much. Soon after he hired my father to author his bio. They became great friends. A picture of Stout tending to his irises still hangs in my father’s study nearly forty years after Stout’s death and seven years after my father’s. Well . . . I guess my secret as to why I like the malice domestic formula so much is out . . . Rex, Nero, and Archie are alive and well here. Cain, too! There is some more great stuff on Stout and my father on my website www.crimestalkers.com

Thanks, Paul. But I can’t leave without asking you a question or two. You’ve been able to master the short story formula quite well and have appeared in some great anthologies. How are the novels coming and what can we expect?

I feel a little funny since this is an interview about you and your book. I'm just about done with my novel "The Blues Don't Care," a mystery set on the L.A. homefront during World War II. And almost done with another satirical novel about a screenwriter in L.A. – sort of a 21^st Century West Coast "Bright Lights, Big City".

Thank you for stopping by, Andy.

I think anyone who's interested in mystery in general and Cain in particular, would enjoy this book. I know that I love both "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" both as books and as movies. And, in fact, if I had to show a Martian the ultimate example of film noir it would be "Double Indemnity".

So anyone interested in mystery or Cain or the McAleers or any of the authors mentioned here should check out...

...PACKED AND LOADED:

Also check out www.crimestalkers.com

Buy "Packed and Loaded" at Amazon

Joining me today is Lois Winston, author of Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, House Unauthorized and the Dreams and Desires series. She's just come out with ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN, the first book of a new series, the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries.

PAUL:  Hi Lois and welcome. What is your background – before becoming an author and needlepoint aficionado?

LOIS: First, thank you for hosting me on your blog today, Paul. Secondly, I’m not a needlepoint aficionado. I don’t think I’ve designed or stitched needlepoint in at least 20 years. What I design, among other things, is counted cross stitch. Big difference. Probably not to most guys (except those who own craft publishing or manufacturing companies) but a huge one to needlecrafts enthusiasts.
I’ve been designing needlework, fabric crafts, and general crafts for book and magazine publishers and kit manufacturers for many years (if I told you how many, you’d try to figure out how old I am, and in our youth-obsessed culture, I can’t have that, now can I?). Before that I worked as an advertising art director and a staff artist for a major department store chain.

Tell us a little about yourself, your background.  Do you have a day job or are you able to support yourself with your writing?  ...and needlework?

I wish I could support myself with my writing! Few authors can. I know NY Times bestselling authors who still can’t quit their day jobs. I juggle three careers. Besides my writing, I still design for one manufacturer and several magazines. I’m also an associate of the literary agency that reps me.

And tell us a little about your new book, "Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun."

I thought you’d never ask! ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN is the first book in my new Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series from Midnight Ink. It’s a fast-paced amateur sleuth mystery infused with humor. Kirkus called it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” How cool is that?

I understand that the protagonist in this novel is a new one for you.  Tell us a little about her.  Is she like you?  How did she come about?

Is Anastasia like me? I’m getting asked that question a lot. Anastasia and I have similar backgrounds. We’re both North Jersey girls. We both went to art school. She’s a crafts editor for a women’s magazine. As I mentioned earlier, I design for magazines. I’ve also worked as a crafts editor for several craft book publishers. We both have two sons and one other relative in common (but I’m not saying which one!) The differences? My husband is very much alive (thank goodness!), I don’t have a Shakespeare quoting parrot, and I haven’t found any dead bodies hot glued to my office chair. Yet.

Love the title: Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun.  And I know you write humorous mysteries, but where did that title come from?  --Have you ever been assaulted with a deadly glue gun...

Anastasia came up with the title. And yes, I have been assaulted with a glue gun -- on more than one occasion. I’ve got the scars to prove it.

Would you say deadly glue guns kill people or do people kill people?

I’d say people kill people with deadly glue guns. Although certain glue guns have been known to take on a life of their own. Just ask mine.

And do you sleep with a glue gun under the pillow for protection – is it licensed?

Doesn’t everyone? No license required for glue guns, at least not yet.

In the new book, there's a Shakespeare quoting parrot named Ralph.  Can you tell us some of his favorite lines from Shakespeare?  And does he look for animalcentric quotes from the Bard or is he a generalist?

Ralph’s quotes are always situation-appropriate. He’ll pick up on something being said by someone and run with it.  For instance, at the beginning of the book, Anastasia is confronted by a demand for $50,000 from her dead husband’s loan shark. Ralph sums up the situation by squawking, “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now, Julius Caesar. Act Three, Scene Two.”  Ralph always annotates his quotes. Comes from spending most of his life in Great-aunt Penelope’s English lit classroom.

And what's this about Anastasia's mother-in-law being a Communist?  Or does she just like to wear pink?

Lucille is a card-carrying commie. Very old-school. Decidedly red.

How much of your fiction is drawn from real life?  Or your life in particular.


I get much of my source material from either personal experience or observing life around me. I’m a total news junkie and have used actual news stories as springboards for plots and characters. And as I mentioned earlier, there is this one relative that Anastasia and I both have in common…

One of your pet peeves is people who don't return phone calls or answer their e-mails.  I'm with you on both.  Any chance the glue gun or another weapon might be used on these folks in a future novel?

Always a possibility. Anastasia’s been known to wield a mean X-acto knife, as well.

Tell us some of your signings that people can go to.

Right now I’m in the middle of a month-long blog tour. The schedule is posted on my website, http://www.loiswinston.com, and at Anastasia’s blog, http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. I’ll also be at several writers’ conventions and conferences throughout the year, and those are also posted on my website.

How and when/where can people get your book?  And how can they reach you...assuming you want to be reached.

ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN is available now at most bookstores, all the usual online venues, and at my publisher’s website, http://www.midnightinkbooks.com. I have links on my website that will take you directly to Amazon, B&N, etc. As for me, people can contact me through my website or by emailing me at lois@loiswinston.com.
 
Anything else you want to share with us?

For the blog tour I’m doing this month, I’m giving away 5 copies of ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN. Everyone who posts a comment to any of the blogs where I’m guesting (see above for where to find schedule) will be entered into a drawing. (Anyone who’s email isn’t included in their comment should email me privately at lois@loiswinston.com to let me know they’ve entered.) In addition, I’m also giving away an assortment of crafts books to anyone who posts a comment on select blogs.

Thank you for being here today. I now know to stay out of the line of fire of glue guns. And I hope people will go and buy ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN before the glue is dry.

…is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Includes my story “Poison Heart,” plus stories by J.F. Benedetto, Mitzi Flye, Barb Goffman, Carole Hall, Erika Hoffman, Rosemary Olson, Judith R. O’Sullivan, John Reisinger, T.S. Rider, Charles Schaeffer, D.I. Telbat, Elise Warner, Alice M. Weyers, Lina Zeldovich.

Proceeds go to the Christopher Reeve Foundation.  Good stories for a good cause.  Get yours now.

Recently, several of the authors and one of the of the editors of Murder in La-La Land trekked up Highway 126 to the Blanchard Library in Santa Paula, CA. We had a good turnout and everybody there was wonderful. As nice as can be. Interested. Attentive. The library itself, a former supermarket, is a cavernous building – a giant airplane hangar or soundstage with tons of books. The kind of place that I enjoy just wandering around for hours.

But there was (is) one problem: Except for the people who came to see us, this huge building was empty. Empty! Not a single person there wandering the stacks. Nobody at the tables bent over books. Nobody on the computers. Nobody even talking loud so the librarian had to shush them. Granted, we live in the age of the internet, but people still go to libraries, don't they? And isn't the library still a place to go for socializing, if not for learning? Where I live they are going to be opening a new library and I can't wait, even though I'm addicted to the internet as much as anybody else.

I fear that this is merely a symptom of a post-literate society. After all, what are people looking up on the net, Shakespeare? Or is it only Much Ado About Poontang? Or spending endless hours on Facebook, just diddling around with the all important updates about what they had for breakfast and, even more importantly, if they had a good bowel movement.

Maybe because it was summer. Maybe because it was a weekend afternoon. But something tells me that's the not the case. We all know that reading and readership is declining and ageing. Out of a crowd of about twenty-five people, maybe three were under the age of fifty. That is scary.

It seems to me that the more info we have the less people seem to be interested in it – at least in info that means anything.

And how many people in our society are functionally illiterate? I've seen figures of up to a third of the population cannot read a medicine bottle. How many lawyers can't name the Supreme Court justices? How many teachers don't know even the basics of their subjects and can't teach? How many people are dropping out of school or graduating, but still barely functional? How many people can barely see beyond the tip of their typing fingers?

Hell yes, I want readers. And I want a country where people are literate, which doesn't mean they have to read Proust or Joyce or, God forbid, "Gravity's Rainbow". I'm no snob, hell I write mysteries for the most part, with some serious fiction thrown in for good measure.

The Blanchard Library is a veritable supermarket of books, but still the audience is going hungry, filling their minds with Facebook and Four Square updates, living Second Lives instead of their first (and real) lives.

This does not bode well for us as authors or the country as a whole. Frankly, it scares the shit out of me! Important Facebook update to come.

 

Makes Its Debut at Los Angeles Times Book Festival in April

As noted author Sue Ann Jaffarian says: "In Los Angeles even murder can be trendy. So settle in and enjoy your trip through La La Land. You may never want to visit us again–"

The bright orange cover hides the book's heart of darkness and murder in the City of the Angels.

Diversity is the name of the game in L.A. Diversity in population. Diversity in food. Even diversity in murder as in "Murder in La-La Land".

This anthology, with twelve stories by a variety of authors, made its debut at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival at UCLA at the end of April:

Its next appearance was at the May SinC-LA meeting where Gabriella Vasquez and I read from our stories. But the official release of the book is on May 22nd at the launch party at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood:

Saturday, May 22, 2010

5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The Mystery Bookstore

1036-C Broxton Avenue

Westwood, California

The book, edited by well-known mystery writers Naomi Hirahara, Eric Stone and Juliet Blackwell, with a forward by Michael Mallory, features twelve stories of murder, mayhem and transitive vampires – whatever the hell they are – in the loony city that we call La La Land.

From the book's cover: "Los Angeles, the City of Angels, home to Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Where everyone is auditioning for a part, and where lies and deceit come veiled as glitz and glamour. Join us, if you dare: view a vampire movie in our Forever Hollywood Cemetery, or take a walk along the concrete banks of the L.A. River. But watch your step. Murder brews within the micro-cosmic homeless communes that call it home and sometimes riffs on melodic waves from the jazz street musicians just down the block. Twelve stories of mystery, murder, and mayhem, from the authors of Sisters In Crime/Los Angeles, that will send you scrambling for a bus ticket home. But watch your back. As they say, nobody leaves LA."

The call went out for stories of Murder in La-La Land. I tried hard to give them what they wanted. My story, CONTINENTAL TILT takes its title from Frank Lloyd Wright's theory that if you stand the country on its edge, all the loose nuts will roll into California: Two strait-laced detectives, who maybe should be strait-jacketed, are called to a murder in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. A vampire movie has been playing on the mausoleum wall and hundreds of, uh, guests have been picnicking and watching the movie from their graveside seats. The ironic thing about this is it really happens. People go to the cemetery dressed as various characters, in this case vampires, werewolves, etc., sit on the graves and "Spread out on beach chairs and blankets, with bottles of wine and beer, Boba tea, doing wheatgrass shooters and eating catered Mexasian sushi, fusion food for the Millennial-iPod generation. " (quoted from "Continental Tilt")

A man is murdered at the cemetery, with two vampire sized pin pricks in his neck, while the vampire movie is playing. Only in L.A.  Only in CONTINENTAL TILT.

A sample from the story is below.  The setup is that the two chagrinned Hollywood Division detectives arrive and start separating the crowd into like groups to start their investigation of the strangest murder mystery of their careers:

"Okay, all vampires over here. Werewolves on the south side of the mausoleum. Frankensteins the north side. Charlie Mansons there, Marilyn Mansons over there." What was I saying?

"What the hell's the difference?" Mari said.

I shouted through a bullhorn. This was the new, kinder and gentler LAPD, but sometimes you still gotta use a bullhorn. "People dressed up as Kiss by the pavilion."

"What about Transitive Vampires?" a voice came out of the blue.

"Transvestite vampires?"

"Trans-i-tive Vampire – don't you know anything?"

"I don't get it. What the hell are you dressed up as?"

"A dangling participle," the trans-whatever vampire sneered. His disdainful tone said he thought he was a notch above the other vampires. As opposed to the normal vampires he wore all white, top hat, tails and cape. I was going snow-blind looking at him.

"Something's dangling. I'm not sure if it's your, uh, participle," Mari said.

"I really should be dressed as a verb. Transitives are verbs, but then I'd need a direct object, you know."

I didn't know. I didn't think I cared. But in ferreting out a case you have to have all the information. Okay, he was a dangling participle but he should have been a verb.

"Why don't you tell us a little about yourself? What are you doing here?"

"I came to watch the film, of course."

"You like to watch movies in a graveyard?"

"It sort of sets the mood, don't you think?"

"Did you see anything?"

"You mean like the deceased becoming deceased?"

"Yeah, like that."

"Certainly not. I was watching the film."

"Film, they all call it film. When did movies become film...or cin-e-mah?" Mari said. "What do you do for a living, besides sucking blood, of course?"

"Are you implying I'm the killer?"

"No, just a bloodsucker."

"I'm a writer. Agents are the real bloodsuckers."

"What do you write?"

"Novels."

"Have I read any of them?"

"Can you read?"

I stepped between him and Mari and turned him over to a D-I to get his stats.

"You still haven't told me where to go, Detective," he called to me, probably 'cause he knew I had weight. I was sorry we were still in earshot.

"I'd like to tell you where to go–" Mari said.

The transitive vampire stared at Mari. "You, dear lady, are an indefinite pronoun."

"Did he just insult me?" Mari glared.

"Just go with the other vampires," I said, stepping in front of her. I didn't want her to tarnish the rep of the kindergentlerLAPD.

"Good Lord, don't you know I'm not like the other vampires. I'm a transitive vampire."

"Aren't all vampires from Transylvania?" I said.

"It's trans-i-tive, not Tran-syl-vania," he said. "Don't you people know the difference?"

"Fine, find all the other transitive vampires and start your own group."

It was going to be a long night.

                    *      *      *

The editors tried to select stories with diverse locations and subjects and it's fun to see how everyone came up with their different takes on La-La Land. So get off of your yoga mats and skip the spinning for today, let your fingers do the walking across your keyboard to your favorite bookseller and order the damn book.

MURDER IN LA-LA LAND

With stories by (and in order of appearance):

Paul D. Marks – "Continental Tilt"

Terri Nolan – "Hobo Joe"

Pam Ripling – "Just Like Jay"

Jack Maeby – "Beethoven's Last Chorus"

Jane DiLucchio – "Blondes Have More Fun"

Gabriela Vazquez – "Average Monster"

Jude McGee – "Death is Golden"

Patricia Morin – "Rap Sheet"

Kathy Kingston – "This I Know"

Donna May – "The Acquisition"

Kathleen Piche – "Board and Care"

Lenore Carlson – "Mrs. Spacek"

Murder in La-La Land authors and editors:

They're both searching for their characters.

I once had a producer tell me that character is "picking your nose with a .38." He meant the pistol, of course, unless he had something else in mind, which I'd rather not know about. But character is not "picking your nose with a .38;" it's not wearing a fedora or a handlebar moustache, driving a tricked out Mini or even carrying a .44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world". Though many people, like this producer, seem to confuse superficial attributes with character.

Character is the decisions and choices the character makes. But to get to that you have to ask yourself and your character some basic questions. What does your character want and/or need? And why? To what lengths are they willing to go to get it? Will she choose X over Y? What is he willing to sacrifice to get what he wants? Plus other questions such as these and the usual basic backstory questions about everything from their background to their eye color.
Even in Dirty Harry's case the Magnum is only a character attribute or "tic," if you will. But it isn't Harry's character. Harry's character comes out of the choices Harry makes, choices to defy the system, do things his own way and get justice at any cost, not giving a damn about the legal niceties.

But how do you get to know your character? One way is to get to know your character's backstory. And that backstory will guide you to your character's decisions and make him consistent. Actors, like writers, want to know their character's backstory so they can know how and why the character reacts this way or that in a certain situation and thus how to play the part. Writers and actors have a lot in common. The main thing is that they both have to find the heart and soul of their characters.

And even though actors are handed a script most scripts are like a blueprint for a building. The basis for the building is there but right now it's just lines on a piece of paper or a computer screen. In this sense writers and actors have a lot in common and they can learn from one another. Not too long ago I did a review of "The Right Questions for Actors" by acting coach Jeanne Hartman. In it she asks fifteen questions that actors should ask themselves when considering their character. Some of these can help us writers see our character's secrets, while others will help in seeing the power relationships (who's dominant and submissive) between characters, etc. Most, if not all, of these questions are good things for writers to consider when writing our characters. Spiral bound and with worksheet pages, it's not a bad guide for writers as well as actors. And it might also be good if we put ourselves in the heads of our characters the way an actor might.

The bottom line is that we can both learn from each other's crafts. Even if we're not writing for the visual arts, stage, screen, television, the art of the actor can help us get into the heads of our characters.